Learn Italian: Vogliamo usare il riscaldamento, potete accenderlo? - We want to use the heating, can you turn it on?

Vogliamo usare il riscaldamento, potete accenderlo?

We want to use the heating, can you turn it on?

Breakdown of Vogliamo usare il riscaldamento, potete accenderlo?

him/it (direct object)

Questions & Answers about Vogliamo usare il riscaldamento, potete accenderlo?

Can I say lo potete accendere instead of potete accenderlo?

Yes! When you have a modal verb like potere (can/to be able to) followed by an infinitive, you can either attach the pronoun to the end of the infinitive (potete accenderlo) or put it right before the conjugated modal verb (lo potete accendere). Both are perfectly correct and mean the exact same thing.

Why do we use lo for "it" here?

Lo refers back to il riscaldamento (the heating). Because riscaldamento is a masculine singular noun, you must use the masculine singular direct object pronoun lo. If it were a feminine word, like la stufa (the heater), you would use la and say potete accenderla.

What happened to the final 'e' in accendere?

When you attach a pronoun to an infinitive verb (a verb ending in -are, -ere, or -ire), you always drop the final 'e' to make the word flow better. So, accendere + lo becomes accenderlo.

Why is there no pronoun attached to usare in the first half of the sentence?

In the first half, we explicitly name the object: usare il riscaldamento (to use the heating). In the second half, we don't want to repeat the word "heating", so we replace it with the pronoun lo (it) and attach it to the second verb.